Josie Hotel in Rossland to provide local jobs

The Josie Hotel — expected to open sometime in 2018 — will provide 90 to 100 jobs according to the hotel’s general manager, and he hopes to hire locals for many of those positions.

Mark Bell, employed by the hotel management company Trust Hospitality, recently arrived in Rossland to open the Josie Hotel’s pre-opening office and begin the process of hiring staff. He’s interviewing individuals for senior management positions and looking for a head chef for the hotel’s restaurant.

“We’ve actively looking for the senior management roles right now. So director of sales, human resources manager, controller, food and beverage manager, chef and then the next level, which I have to do the timelines on this afternoon, would be roughly three months prior to opening,” Bell said on Thursday, June 22. “And then we would start bringing on the line staff three to four weeks out max.”

He says Trust Hospitality is definitely looking to hire some locals for the Josie.

“We’ve already started the interview process. We have interviewed some local people, and I certainly encourage people to just come and drop their resume off here or they can go to our website,” said Bell.

The pre-opening office is at 2105 Columbia Ave. and the website is thejosie.com.

Bell can’t say for sure yet when the hotel will open, but they are going to start booking rooms for April 1 and hope to have the first three floors completed sometime in January.

Once complete, the hotel will be five stories, with 106 rooms on the top three floors, 1,500 square feet of meeting space, a restaurant and a bar on the second floor, and reception, office space and parking on the first floor. Outside, there will be large decks, a pool and private hot tub cabanas.

The meeting space will be available for rent to the public, and the restaurant will be farm to table, though until a chef has been hired, Bell can’t say much more than that.

“But we’re working on it,” he said.

Asked if the hotel will have enough parking to accommodate everyone staying at the hotel, Bell replied, “Probably not. Depends how they get there. I’m guessing that the majority will come by car, but all of the parking in the hotel is valet. So …that will be up to us to figure out where to put it, and we’re working very closely with the Red Mountain people on those issues.”

“But unless we’re pretty much full, we should be able to handle it and all of it will be indoors,” Bell added.

During his career, Bell has helped open a number of hotels, including one in Banff. He was at Sunshine Mountain Lodge for the past five years and is now looking forward to being in Rossland for a while.

“The mountains keep calling me back,” said Bell, who is also a skier.

He encourages people to stop by the office and say hi, and the website now has a live webcam so people can check out the construction progress on the hotel.